Movies and the Holocaust

Joshua M. Greene’s Oct. 4 Counterpunch (“Movies Present Holocaust as We’d Like It to Be”) struck with such resonance. It shook up my complacency about many disturbing, so-called historic facts. That we do trivialize such inhumanity as the Holocaust proves the point that we have not come very far since the days of mass destruction of the Aztec civilization, the Inquisition and the systematic elimination of the American Indians.

JEANNIE BRIMHALL

Northridge

Please transmit to Greene my deep gratitude for his powerful and eloquent piece on Holocaust movies. It is exactly on the mark in its honest, clear and responsible thought.

KARL KOHN

Claremont

I found it difficult to view “Saving Private Ryan,” but Steven Spielberg’s goal of honoring the veterans was realized. Therefore, although learning history through film is always a distortion, I guess if it is credible, it does do some good in reminding future generations that the event actually happened.

DAVID SOLKOVITS

Northridge

Hollywood has to stop making Holocaust movies. It’s impossible. It can’t be done. And it’s a tragic disservice to the millions who were humiliated, tortured and murdered 1941-1945. Even Spielberg’s excellent “Schindler’s List” managed to sanitize this horrible chapter of inhuman history. The women were attractively made up, there was fine cinematic lighting in dreary Poland, and we could almost believe that the opportunistic Nazi businessman--Herr Schindler--was evidence that there were some good Nazis. Fact is, that very tiny group of “Schindler Jews” just lucked out, because they managed to come under the umbrella of this greedy, extorting Nazi factory CEO.

It is better that today’s young people know nothing about the Holocaust, rather than having them taught that things weren’t really so bad, and that “the human spirit” prevailed.

GARY S. FRANKLIN

Chatsworth

I think the filmmakers who gave us the “Schindler” and “Jakob” scenarios do us a service by raising the consciousness about that ugly time in our history. But they are films, not documentaries; they must be made palatable so that we can look at the screen rather than stay away or avert our eyes (as captured Nazi film footage makes many do).

The hope remains alive, then, that “we will not forget.” It makes it possible for us to consider the sickness in human nature, to confront the notion that we are all capable of being Nazis. Greene correctly cautions us not to forget the evil in us, but these films are not just an “impulse to defend the decency of the human race”; they remind us of our need for decency. These films don’t trivialize the events; they remind us that they did, indeed, occur.

JACK DRAKE

Redondo Beach